All the bugs seem to be worked out.
The iPod now successfully interfaces with my laptop and with my camera.

Yesterday I took my Sony DSC f828 camera and shot 228 5 megapixel images on my 512 MB memory stick.
When I arrived home I dined on delicious home made sloppy joes that Cynthia had made for dinner.

I was upbeat and optimistic and ready to take on the iPod for the final round.

My first order of business was to connect the iPod to the laptop and download the 300+ songs Cynthia had ripped (so far) from our CD collection.

*side note; The iTunes software is pretty damn amazing. Cynthia is not all that technically savvy and does not warm up to new software applications very readily. That being said, she has pretty much mastered the ripping process and has even begun to create some nice custom play. This is a HUGE bonus as it has sped up the process of digitizing the music collection.

I connected the iPod and, as it should, the iTunes software fired up. iTunes allowed me to name my iPod and initialized it correctly for Windows use. All 300+ songs were uploaded to the iPod in less than 10 minutes.

The next step was to connect my camera to the iPod and pull off the 228 images. All went as planned and the iPod brought up the proper menus and allowed me to offload the entire memory stick. It took approximately 30 minutes to transfer the whole load and used about 1/3 of the battery charge to do so. I deleted the memory stick using the iPod and disconnected.

Now for the real test. Could I recover the images from the iPod?

I connected to the laptop and looked under the “My Computer” icon. The iPod showed up as an external drive and I was able to browse the contents. There were my images in a folder. I copied the folder to my laptop in under 5 minutes. I then deleted the files from the iPod which took another few minutes.

All in all, a huge success and a much less painful day than the one before.

At this point I feel confident that I made the right choice. I have a solution for handling my pictures while traveling overseas.

And the bonus (as previously mentioned) is that I have an iPod.
I’m sitting at my desk listening to Cat Stevens as I type this.
On top of that Cynthia can use it and she is even excited about it. The idea of having access to some of her favorite music on the flight or when riding on the train has great appeal to her.

So, in the end, I not only have a practical solution for a problem that was presented in the planning for our trip, but I also have a gadget that will enhance the travelling part of the vacation for Cynthia.

iPod is go for launch
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9 thoughts on “iPod is go for launch

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  • April 26, 2005 at 5:32 pm
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    What? No AirCard?

  • April 26, 2005 at 10:17 pm
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    Awesome! I’m glad you got it working.

    That is an incredibly valuable resource. Esp on a vaction.

  • April 27, 2005 at 2:16 am
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    I took the itty-bitty (under 4lb) laptop to London & Paris last summer and used it to offload my camera images as needed. With a huge card, I got away with doing that about once a day, and brought home about 2500 photos. Now that I’ll have a 60gb photo ipod tomorrow (when it is delivered), it is nice to know that this will be an option for my next traveling adventure!

  • June 6, 2006 at 12:11 am
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    See, I can always count on you. That previously mentioned “itty bitty” laptop has a dead hard drive, and I just found out yesterday that I’m going to London in a week. Not enough time for Mike to replace the hard drive (hard to find for the Sharp as it is), I needed an alternative to lugging around the giant laptop. I have a 1gb card, and when I shoot in RAW it doesn’t hold much.

    Thinking about it tonight, a lightbulb went off! I could use my photo iPod! JAY DID IT! A quick search, up came this post, and I am all set. The Apple camera connector is on sale at Amazon, it is only $30 now! Sweet!

    Any negative to going this route? Did you have any problems getting the photos off the iPod that you didn’t mention here? I can’t imagine that you did, but I had to ask. And I had to thank you, once again, for saving my ass. (My bad shoulder thanks you too, as I really, really did not want to have to carry around the laptop!)

  • June 10, 2006 at 12:56 pm
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    In case anyone else asks in the future, I have tested the Apple camera connector with my photo iPod and a compact flash card and card reader. It worked just fine – no problems at all. I did note that the folder names were changed from their usual naming structure, but the filenames stayed in their normal format. Everything worked great. I even transferred files in RAW format. (Shot with a Canon EOS 20D.)

    Thanks so much for all of your helpful advice & information on this – definitely better than hauling a laptop around! Now I can clear off the card and keep on shooting!

  • May 20, 2007 at 3:16 pm
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    An interesting bit of information. It shows there really isn’t much technical support even if you pay for it.

    I was fortunate enough to purchase a 30GB Video Ipod that had colorware custom red antiscratch paint job with the USB cable and earphones for $200. It looks nice. With respect to accessories, I was also able to purchase a heavy duty carrying case Spect products for $2.00, earplugs for smaller ears for another $2.00 (name brand) . I also purchased Headphone that normallt cost $70 for $12.00

    In looking at the many products, I see a lot of people spending a lot of extra product they don’t need and spending a lot of money trying products they are not sure will work. As a result they keep spending more money strugging to make things compatible and finally work.

    The best way to solve these problems and effectively get what you need to maximize your capabilities cheaply is first to determine 1) How much memory you will need to store all the data you have and then 2) How much of it you would like to put onto your IPod then 3) Environments you would be using your Ipod or portability of all the memory you store.

    Once you determine that, the rest in terms of hardware and compatibility issues become fairly simple to resolve cheaply if you do a little research.

    In my case, I needed to add 300GB of music, not including pictures and audio books. That meant first purchasing a 500GB Hard drive that had both USB and FireWire Ports. The next phase is transferring and organizing the information.

    Because I had no FireWire ports, and three devices that were FireWire capable, I purchased a PCMCIA card the had three ports and was advertised to support IPOD’s and IPOD peripherials-this is because many cards only support transferring information or power, but not both. Some in today’s time do support both.

    With respect the adapters, I also purchased dual adapters with FireWire and USB capability for the wall socket and cigarette lighter in my car-a kit for $25 came with FireWire. Then a cassette adapter $9.95 for my car.

    That’s it…

    The External Hard Drive can move massive amounts of information through the FireWire. That external drive can also be stored or moved anywhere without the need to be plugged in . It also can be powered by the FireWire when plugged into the card. The card also supports my camera FireWire and iPod using FireWire and both transfers information and powers the unit.

    One FireWire, One USB cable as back-up and two plugs that can handle either-everything works fine.

    Like everyone, once the information is organized and categorized and loaded into whatever storage medium that works, I’m amazed at how portable all that information can be as well as the simplicity of accessability.

    Regardless of the enjoyment people may get with the iPOD once they figure out have to get everything working. A common thing that seems to be occurring, particularly among the baby boomers, that have iPOD’s is getting them to think and go once step further in centralizing all their sources of information and also integrating with their home entertainment systems and the internet.

    Looking into the future, it’s clear greater storage, faster chips better able to handle all perpherials. Things will continue to get smalle, easier to manage and a lot more portable. This will make it easier to work from home and also make it easier for US employers to layoff and outsource it’s workers.

  • September 9, 2007 at 12:17 pm
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    Hello,

    Are you saying that the Sony DSC F-828 can be used with iPod using iPod Camera Connector ? If this it, can you just send me an e-mail to confirm, please ?
    Thanks, See you soon.

  • January 28, 2010 at 9:32 am
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    I wonder if you can connect a camera to the new iPad…

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